What I'm Reading: 'The First Bad Man' by Miranda July

The First Bad Man was our February book club selection, but I wasn't able to get a copy from the library until it was much too late, short and quick of a read as it is. Instead I got the enjoy the surprisingly delightful experience of hearing my friends discuss it, which only whet my appetite to read it. There were many funny remarks that made me reflect on what my friends think about me, including "I'd recommend you read it -- but I wouldn't recommend most people read it," and "I think you should read it because you'd enjoy thinking about it and writing about it." 

They were all right -- I did really enjoy it and I was really anxious to blog about it. And I, too, would not recommend it to very many people. It is a very contemporary novel that somehow manages to make the normal and the mundane feel so extraordinary and grotesque. It reminded me of Sheila Heti's writing in its frankness about ordinary life. There is a constant tension in the characters, and as a reader you will always be wondering if they are decidedly strange and their actions macabre, of if you are just glimpsing the average internal life of an average human.

Miranda July is such a famous figure in certain circles, so I truly did not expect much from this novel, and I was completely blown away by it. The blurb from Hilton Als on the back cover helped, and I'm really anxious to read her short story collection now.

Books For TV Lovers: 'Girls'

Only two weeks in to Season 4 of HBO's 'Girls' and you already can't get enough right? JK. Sometimes (often) it feels like I'm the only person rooting for this show anymore, but if you, like me, still care and think 'Girls' is great, then enjoy the following reading list:

Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham -- Perhaps a bit on the nose, but if this is what you like, then you will like it.

How Should a Person Be by Sheila Heti -- A really great novel about friendship between creative women in Toronto. Also some truly unfortunate sex scenes that share a sensibility with 'Girls.'

Anything by the lovely Jane Smiley, director of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where our intrepid heroine is enrolling this season. A Thousand Acres is terrific and I've heard great things about her latest novel as well.

Little Women by Louis May Alcott -- Everyone cites 'Sex and the City' as the natural predecessor but any group of four women coming-of-age and having mostly shitty stuff happen to them owes everything to Little Women. This viewpoint is clearly shared by Lena Dunham who included a really funny and sweet allusion to the novel in Season 2. FYI - Hanna is Jo, Marnie is Meg, Shoshanna is Amy, Ray/Adam are very likely Marmee, and Jessa is no one because the March sisters don't have a really useless, annoying, selfish sister....maybe Beth?

Books For TV Lovers is a recurring post that rounds up a reading list of titles inspired by my favorite TV shows.

Bookhive's Best of 2014

So many bloggers and writers and editors will tell you how much they positively despise putting together "Best of' lists at the end of the year. Those people are lying. Making lists is incredibly fun and frankly not all that difficult. Yes, there are tons of movies and books and albums that are made each and every year, but only a small fraction of them are worth consideration for a "Best of" list and it is quite literally their job to figure out which ones. So they can get over it. 

A few caveats regarding my own list: I am not a professional literary editor or reviewer; I have a full-time job so anything I read that was published in 2014 had to be squeezed into an already busy schedule, and additionally, had to be available to me at the library or interesting enough to warrant a purchase, which is rare for new titles. I'm still not enough of a mover and shaker to warrant advance review copies, so I do my best to keep up and I have the library fines to prove it. Thus, my favorite titles published in 2014:

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore -- Smart, well-researched, incredibly interesting and so much more than a history of a comic book character. 

On Immunity by Eula Biss -- Really hard to describe but brief and wonderful all the same. Her meditations on the nature of disease and vaccination are poetic and troubling.

Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples -- This comic started a few years ago but the latest issues and an omnibus edition were published this year, so it's fair game. I am not a comic book expert, so when I say it's my favorite comic book, that probably means very little, but it's really terrific; funny, challenging, and beautiful.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson -- Just ignore the YA-genre buzz around this short prose-poem memoir. Adults should read it, kids should read it.

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant by Roz Chast -- A really warm and honest and insightful graphic memoir on the aging and death of Chast's parents. I cried less than I expected.

Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton -- I was surprised by how many "Best of" lists forgot about this one, because it made a huge impression on me. I still haven't removed it from the pile next to my bed because I keep going back to it. It is endlessly entertaining and makes the smallest minutiae of women's lives fascinating.

What I'm Reading: 'How Should a Person Be?' by Sheila Heti

How Should a Person Be? made such a splash when it was published, and I certainly had every intention of reading it, but as the Heti hysteria died down I sort of forgot about it until it was suggested by a girlfriend for our Book Club selection. I’m really glad I got the reminder, because I’ve just devoured it.  I hadn’t read anything else by Heti before I got my hands on How Should a Person Be?, and I don’t know that I will necessarily scramble to get any of her future books, only because I loved this so much and don’t expect her future work to resemble it; it is too unique and idiosyncratic and personal for anything else to come close.  A part of me wishes that she wouldn’t even try, which is a very cynical viewpoint, I suppose, but I think everyone has had that feeling, of reading a truly, singularly excellent novel, and then avoiding anything else by the same author in order to preserve that impression and experience.  

How Should a Person Be? is something of an indescribable novel-memoir-play, but if I had to pin it down, I think I would focus on its core relationship, between Sheila and her closest friend, the painter Margaux Williams (in this case, the lines between fiction and reality are very deliberately blurred).  There aren’t enough great books about female friendship, and so many elements of the core relationship felt very authentic to me and forced me to reflect on my own friendships.  There is a pervading self-awareness to the novel, which some readers will probably hate; and the constant tension between sincerity and irony feels very millenial generation-esque, and a blurb from Lena Dunham on the back of my paperback copy does not help.  (Full disclosure-- I could not be more ambivalent about Lena Dunham; she says something intelligent in an interview, and I think Good for You, Lena Dunahm! and then she inevitably disappoints me by walking around NYC barefoot following the Met Gala. Girl, no.  That said, when her forthcoming book finally drops, this should be your only destination for long and hopefully fruitful discussions of it).  I would advise you not to get discouraged by its youthfulness; after all, James Wood loved it, and he was born in 1965.